A reminder, supporting Tania's point:
Conflicts of Interests CANNOT be completely avoided.  They can be
managed!  For spousal personnel matters, having separate reporting and
judgement of suitability for the job documented usually suffices.  For many
other COI's, simple disclosure often suffices for management.  Occasionally
a COI rises to the point that removing a conflicted person or declining a
conflicted project is the only management.  And there are lots of "grey"
steps in between.  It is wise to have a COI committee (or other judgement
process, preferably a body of peers) actually set the management in each case.

My personal opinion is that a conflicted individual should propose the
management (maybe with the suggestion of an administrator or of prior
precedent) and the COI Committee or other body approve.   This prevents the
individual from saying "THEY dictated what I should do!"

Chuck

At 01:37 PM 11/19/2004, you wrote:
>Susan -
>
>Oh, yes, this is a conflict of interest. But we've all seen love blossom
>over the lab bench, so it's not that unusual and the conflict can be
>managed.
>
>1) Prove the spouse's credentials - publications, synergistic
>activities, research/awards in the field, etc. This needs to be able to
>stand up to a rigorous external review (your local newspaper, the
>relevant IGs office, etc....)
>
>2) I assume the spouse is an independent contractor and not a temp
>employee for the institution? If you have a co-PI on the award that the
>spouse can be supervised by, that is good. Other options are that they
>would report to and have invoices/effort reports signed off by a
>department head/director/dean. You must remove all approvals of spousal
>work from the other spouse. It's a control issue, and no matter how
>honest and above board everyone is, if you don't the liability
>possibilities are enormous.
>
>3) Facilities & Office Space - where is the work going to take place? At
>this point, we'll assume that the spouse is qualified and legitimately
>capable of doing the work. Now we need to know where the work will take
>place. Are they using their own space, or using the organizations space?
>Why? Is there an agreement in place? Is it appropriate? Are we (the
>organization) going to be charged for samples being processed on our own
>equipment? Or will we be only charged for data analysis after those
>samples are run? You get the idea..... are we paying someone's overhead
>costs as a consultant when they are using our space and don't really
>have any overhead.
>
>4) Finally - why the spouse and not someone else? If the spouse's
>credentials have been proven sufficient enough that they are capable of
>doing the work, why the spouse? If the spouse happens to be the only
>North American expert on the mating habits of Star Bellied Sneetches,
>and the project needs one, case proven.
>
>
>I have had a number of PIs that were/are married work together, and
>we've managed to make it work. I've also had a situation where no one
>knew of the relationship, and the spouse contracted to do work with us
>on the other spouse's award, and was doing work after hours in one of
>our labs, and then charging us a full fee for sample processing,
>analysis, and write-up. That was ugly.
>
>Good luck!
>
>Tania
>
>
>--
>       Accountability and accounting are not the same thing
>
>Tania H. Clucas, CRA
>Financial Manager
>College of Natural Science and Mathematics
>University of Alaska Fairbanks
>354 NSF, 900 Yukon Drive
>Fairbanks, AK 99775-5940
>
>Voice   907.474.5740
>Fax   907.474.5101
>
>mailto:xxxxxx@uaf.edu
>http://www.uaf.edu/csem
>
>
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Herbert "Chuck" Chermside, CRA
Director Emeritus, VCU
Executive Director, Research Administrators Certification Council
1915 Robindale Rd.
Richmond, VA 23235-3931
804-320-5502
xxxxxx@verizon.net

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